The present invention related generally to the field of poultry processing and, in its most preferred embodiments, to the field of apparatus and methods for skinning poultry.
Today, poultry products comprise an ever-growing portion of the diet consumed by humans and animals around the world. Poultry products, including those derived from chickens and turkeys, are delivered to consumers in a variety of forms with many consumers preferring products which are boneless and/or skinless. To produce a boneless product, a poultry processor may employ in-line automated deboning machinery which is capable of removing necessary bones to yield the various desired end products. Such automated deboning machinery, generally, interacts smoothly with the remainder of a poultry processing plant's equipment and operations to enable fast, continuous processing of a bird. Unfortunately, to produce a skinless product, a bird's skin must usually be removed by hand after off-line "aging" of the bird's skin, thereby disrupting the desirable, continuous on-line processing of a bird.
In a typical poultry processing plant, the body of a chicken or turkey is first eviscerated to remove the bird's internal organs. After evisceration, the bird is conveyed to a sizing and cut-up operation where the bird is weighed and routed to one of many cutting lines where each cutting line comprises equipment which has been appropriately configured for a particular range of bird weights. The cutting equipment slices the bird's body into a "front half", including the breasts, wings, ribs, and a portion of the backbone, and a "back half" or "saddle", including the thighs, legs, and the remaining portion of the backbone. The front and back halves are then conveyed to an off-line "aging" process where the bird halves are packed in ice and stored in a cooler for approximately 24 hours. The aging process is partially necessary to enable easier removal of the bird's skin when the bird halves are removed from the cooler and introduced into an on-line deboning operation where the skin is, generally, removed by hand. Unfortunately, the aging process and related handling of the bird halves can contribute to the growth of bacteria which may be harmful to humans. Also, the manual handling of the bird halves required by the off-line aging process coupled with the hand removal of the bird's skin increase the labor costs associated with producing a skinless poultry product for consumers.
Perhaps because the most profitable end products (i.e., the breasts) are derived from the front half, a few attempts have been made to develop automated equipment which can skin the front half of a bird's body. One such machine requires special cutting and handling to properly orient the front half of the bird before the skinning process begins. Another machine employs special cutting rollers and a knife to remove the skin while the from half travels laterally across the rollers and knife. Neither machine, however, eliminates or reduces the need for the aging process and, therefore, does not enable continuous processing of a bird between the evisceration and deboning operations.
There is, therefore, a need in the industry for an apparatus and method which can skin the front half of a chicken, turkey, or similar poultry fowl without requiring prior off-line aging of the front half and can solve other related and unrelated problems that become apparent upon reading and understanding this specification.